a short story by karl michael vincent waugh 
Spiritualized – Let It Come Down
He studied the photograph. Black and white, a face, female. The face smiled, a small and happy smile, a small and happy face. She had a medium length black hair, a gorgeous blue eyes, these obviously did not show up in the photograph but he knew they were blue, and he knew they were gorgeous.
Looking at the face he realised for once that he wasn’t lusting, he wasn’t dreaming of some girl he would wink at across the classroom or field. It wasn’t some tarty pop princess or some powdered film star. This girl, was a friend. She was his friend and he, he thanked the gods, was her friend. They got to know each other for no apparent reason. They shared a college, of about 2000 people. They met because they were new to the college, as were about 1000 of the students, it was only beginning of the year. They had both met someone they had never met before, and thus had met each other. The medium was an eco-princess, a wonderfully kind woman, vegan, C.N.D. member, nice soul and stoner.
He had met her due to no apparent reason and got on due to both being at Reading Festival. She had met the medium due to both being vegans. He met the face in the photograph by just sitting in the area, and then by asking to have some fake fur. He had noticed the fur, attached to a 20’s style grey detectives-y hat. While thinking of the fur he decided that he wanted it, not because he had some great use for a 2 by 3 inche black a green fur, but because it was a nice gesture towards humanity or reality (he never was or has been sure which) and because it sat in this cool hat on this cool looking girl. So wanting the fur he decided to ask for it, politely of course, and then he noticed the time and went off to lesson (passing the fur, thus the hat, and thus the girl also) He felt so stupid when she passed the fur over because he could never recall asking for it, and is still sure he screwed up that moment (against the amazing evidence) he has learnt to accept these thoughts since she got to know him, and then they discovered a mutual love of music, sounds of prettiness and despair.
He knew that he loved her, the photograph. The photograph had been smiling and this made him happy, the satisfaction of the girl he loved being happy. His memory knew that she was smiling at him and that her face was alight due to himself also. This photo was a few months old, she was happy then, he thinks she is still happy now. Time he realised was bizarre. He had certainly been making her happy for at least 3 months. She would have sworn it was more like 9. The fur incident was roughly 9 months previously. In a few weeks they would be 9 months of officially loving each other’s company, this is of course the same as saying they had spent just over 8 months together. They each preferred using 9 months as the date, it had a sweeter quality. 9 months is the time it takes to give birth, to create life. They hadn’t created life yet but this was irrelevant, they had tried seriously not to creating life and so it would have to be a minimum of another 9 months before an amalgamation of their beings appeared. But the 9 months factor was intrusting, they could finally somehow say that they had been real. A pregnancy, the greatest alliance of a female body to her lover, only last 9 months, the birth of another human being, the reason for the entire species is to give birth, to go through pregnancy, to perform the act of loving between man and woman, sex. This temple of actions and existence is a 9 month plan, and 9 months he and she had been together.
He had spent the weekend with her, she and he had been taking to his birth town, with his parents, to visit his fathers friends. He knew his fathers friends well, they had always been here now and again, for a drink and a late night chat. So he had bought his lover along with him, since he knew the friends, then why couldn’t she. They had of course been doing the relationship thing for 9 months. So his fathers friends, the drunks and the lovers and the despaired, all very kind souls, had congregated in the holiest of holy friends meeting places, a pub. So the holy trinity; the couple, the parents, their friends; performed the act of drinking and talking together, the conversation would be repeated here but it would be too laboriously long, complicated, of little use to this tale and would have numerous alcohol induced gaps. But back to the point, this conversation and drinking ritual went on between 3.30 and the evil closing time of 11.30. And not to exaggerate, the couple, he and she, were drunk. So to bed they went and soon, by the measure of the brain, they awoke, pained. Together they endured a breakfast of burnt toast and fermented orange juice, and then a 3 hour journey back to his home, where upon she started on her journey back to her living quarters where her family would be waiting. So he had sat only thinking, thinking about the weekend, thinking about his girlfriend, and then thinking about an old friend. He thought about the old friend, then he phoned the old friend, and then he went to visit his old friend.
Walking down the road he never walked, he realised that he had been with his girlfriend forever. Yes he had only met her 9 months previously but then he realised that what he had before her, was only a dream. An alcohol fuelled, laughter filled, demented dream including more good friends than he knew and more tears than damaged medieval church. There hadn’t been a time before her, only a time without her. His old friends never called anymore. His old alliances never saluted and his old loves never smiled at him anymore. But her did not dwell or care on this issue. On the whole he is a happy man.
So he and an old friend whom with he had set fire to toilet seats, drank half pints of spirit concoctions, and many other forgotten mini adventures, met up and went up to see his friends allotment. Part of our “hero” thought that an allotment was a little bit sad. Not in the “oh my god that is soo sad” way, but because his friend, a master of the english language and a player of beautiful piano, was now spending much of his time in a fairly empty field, pouring water into the ground and pouring sweat and brains into nothing. But then he did know that in another way it was wonderful for him, he could sit alone, read, drink, smoke, think. He didn’t have the hassle of his mother moaning about him hating college, or his sister nagging about the smell of smoke in the bathroom, and he didn’t have other friends phoning up and worrying about him, fretting that he was smoking too much, panicking that he hating college and was failing. So the allotment had become his friend’s best hiding place from reality. And he knew that it was a good thing. Everyone needs somewhere to disappear to, something to eat away their pain. His own was in poetry, music and noise, his own and other peoples. They sat at the allotment, drinking slowly, and talking plenty.
Who have you seen recently?
Did you really like him/her?
They were nice/ horrible/ weird weren’t they?
Everyone has a dark side!
Do you think he wants to kill me?
And so on. It could have been seen as a slow and boring conversation but both sides seemed to enjoy it and later on our hero left content. After a quick phone call to his girlfriend, to wish her a happy work day, for she was not bothering with the monday’s college since she had found a job for that day and it didn’t really bother her since the exams had just finished and being a degenerate was planned and as all people know, drinking plenty needs money, so she planned to earn it.
Pavement – Brighten The Corners
He awoke, calm at being woken, annoyed at being alive. Most people will find some kind of joy in the idea that they could die any night. That instead of waking up you just stay asleep. You would never know how you died. You might have been murdered by you neighbours. Or accidentally smothered by your cats. You could choke on your own vomit. You could just stop, not for any particular reason, not because you are unwell or because you had eaten something wrong but just because. I am certain people’s sub-conscious wants to just stop, give up on the pressures of society, never need to bother with the smell of mould or dust burning as you warm up your amplifier for the first time in weeks. So that it never needs to worry about tax returns or if that money was wasted, or should I have missed work today. The interesting thing is that I will never know what people think.
So he awoke and something had annoyed him that he was alive but he quickly got over it. He had college to go to.
As he boarded the train he found a seat, it was opposite this girl. She was dressed fairly tartily, short skirt, revealing top, hair let loose (which is quite a rarity, but in his mind always a good thing). She was not properly attractive, not really, not in the way that a rose is attractive, not in the way that his girlfriend was attractive. She smiled. This wasn’t the sweet, loving, gentle smile in the photograph; this wasn’t of happiness taken inside. Neither was this a smile of recogniseation, such a common travelling smile. This smile was a partly evil smile, it was a dare to undress her, the smile wanted him to involved her in sexual intercourse. To fuck her, not to make love, there was no love inside the smile, only lust, and not even lust of the body. It was lust of sex, the smile wanted sex, not with him cause he was nice, not because she thought his body was nice, not because she liked his hair or thought his eyes pretty, not even cause she might have thought that he would be a good fuck or he was well endowed. No. She just wanted sex for the sake of sex. She wanted to tear his clothes off and to push her breasts against his chest, and push him inside or her. She wanted sex for the sake of it.
He disembarked the train. He needed to change trains, his train terminated here and he needed to continue his journey to college. As he stepped onto the platform he looked behind her, she was following him (she had no choice, she had to disembark or to forever sit on the train going back and forth along the south coast, staring through and at the graffiti-ed windows, at the sky and the houses, alone forever). He didn’t really want her, she wasn’t attractive, he had a girlfriend he loved, he would see her tonight. She touched his hand as she overtook him, she turned her head and looked into his eyes. Her eyes, he thought, were half desperate for something different, and half lusting after anything. He felt sorry for her.
He followed her out of the barriers and into the woman’s toilet. He didn’t think what he was doing, it just happened. She never spoke, he wondered if she could. Inside the toilet she pushed him into a cubical, and pulled off his belt letting his trousers fall to the ground. He fell half leaning against the system. She pushed herself on top of him, skirt around her waist, knickers fallen to the floor, top fully open, breasts in his face. She clearly hadn’t had sex for along time because she seemed to be remembered how it felt, she clearly enjoyed it much because she moaned loudly and frequently, like one of those corny porn stars only something let him no this was real, he could feel it. She was sweating hard, her sweat dripped onto his shirt. The smell it gave off was slightly scary, almost as though it was male and not female, the aroma of the sex rose from below him, this was very real and had an innocent sense to it, the toilet had an overpowering smell of disinfectant, sickening and revolting it was everywhere, trying to cover the urine that inhabited the air and floor, instead that sat side by side making it impossible to breath. She was breathing heavily, in and out, moan and moan. She took in all the air around him, every last drop. The air he did receive was scented with his sweat, her sweat (with is scary aroma), the disinfectant, the urine and the rampant sex that happened, obliviously, below. His eyes flickered, he lost focus and saw the woman at an odd angle, she reminded him of his old P.E. teacher, masculine yet delicate. He started to pant, she obviously thought this was him in pleasure, he wasn’t enjoying it that much, she was too self obsessed to make it good for him. He was very tired, out of hair, crushed by her body, intoxicated by the smell. He passed out as she moaned a really heavy moan. He was scared, what would happen to him, would she want to marry him, take him home, fuck him there forever, kill him. He didn’t know and he was losing consciousness.
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Madonna
The spinning world slowed down, the endless blur started to subside and images started to appear, here a suitcase, there a face. Soon all began to make sense. He never wanted it to, he didn’t want to see the station before him, he didn’t want to notice his train pulling out of the station, he certainly didn’t want to notice that his hands had blood on them and that everything apart from his clothes were missing. He looked up to the clock, this was a classic station clock, big rimmed, pounding hands going round, big black roman numerals indicating the time of day. It was 11 O’clock, he should have been at college 2 hours before. What had happened to the time, where had he been, why didn’t he know. He went for his pockets, splashing blood down his jeans; wallet, phone, poem book, all gone. But he was inside the barriers, how? He didn’t care to ask and anyway he wouldn’t know who to ask or how to ask. He looked around for the woman, he couldn’t see her, but would he recognise her, the only image of her he could recall was the mid-coital one, sweat covered, panic in his own veins. He didn’t want to see her like this again, he didn’t want to see anyone like this ever again. It was wrong to be like this. He did not like it. He couldn’t see her anyway, and this didn’t bother him, the sooner she vanished the better. Noticing his hands he wondered why he had blood on them.
“Last Call For The 11.05 Train To -----”
He saw the train and knew it was his train, they were very regular since where he wanted was available by 2 routes from this station. He jumped onto the train and sat there. He looked across at the old woman there, she saw the blood on his hands and scurried off down the train. He sat, and he waited.
What he was waiting for he wasn’t sure. Was someone going to call the police since he had blood soaked hands and looked like a vagrant, he caught his reflection and was worried about the state he looked, for him to worry it was clearly bad. Was someone he knew going to come up the train. Maybe his mother would walk down the train, not expecting to see him, just going to work after a morning affair. Maybe his girlfriend, having come looking for him after hearing he wasn’t at college, she would have just given up and was returning with tears streaming down her so she could continue with her worthless job with no hope of seeing her boyfriend ever again. Maybe the girl he had met earlier, maybe she could explain what had happened, maybe she would want to kill him, or maybe she wouldn’t know who he was. From the seat he was sinking into he heard a noise and looked around, from the end of the train, walking slowly with precision and calm, glancing up the carriage every few moments, was the conductor. The conductor had just called to get tickets ready, our hero was in the next carriage so had a few minutes to get ready, he went for his pockets. Empty. All he had were his house keys, stained with blood and unexpectedly dented but still none the less his house keys. What was he gong to do about not having a ticket or money? He didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. He was in trouble. He had time, the conductor had at least 8 people to check. The toilet, he could go to the toilet. But don’t they check the toilet? Yes, they do. But he only realised this once he started walking. So if not the toilet where could he go? Without an answer to this he couldn’t stop. So he kept walking, and this lead to the end, where he was rather stuck. He still had no money and no ticket. He looked around, a rather empty carriage. A small child and mother, a man and a scruffy dog with him. He looked around again, dirty windows hiding the beautiful country side from view, cracked wood and graffiti all over the seats, and a door. A door with the window pulled half down, what you do when it needs to be opened. A door waiting to be opened. A man needing to escape. He knew what he was thinking was stupid, but it worked. And so he walked sideways.
He woke up at the side of the tracks later still, the sun had gone down a little bit, he reckoned it must be almost 3 O’clock. He worked out what way was home and walked, slowly at first due to badly bruised arms and legs. It’s a very solemn activity to walk down the train tracks. He would hide whenever trains came by as to not make them stop and inquire about him. And slowly he got home.
He wanted to get home and call the girl in the photograph, but then he realised he couldn’t. He had done the one thing that is not to be done. He had gone off with another female. He had violated the couple’s most basic and sacred principle. And he knew if he phoned her, he would have to tell her, and if he told her, she would leave him, or slap him, taking a little bit of skin off, leaving a rash and running off with tears. He would have ruined the best thing he had ever known. It would have been gone. And so he realised the only way to save his relationship.
He wondered about dreams, not dreams you have at night, they are far to basic to be wondered over. No, he wondered about day dreams, plans, and ideas. He wondered had the girl he had been a dream, an hallucination. Maybe he had been dropped something, that would explain a lot, but then if he had imagined it then why was it so real in memory, and why wasn’t it more of a dream. If he had wanted to cheat on his girlfriend then it would have been twins, cause every man dreams of twins, and they would giggle in the way sisters do, and they would have let him take control, but then they would have also taken control. They would laugh and dance naked and they would obviously be relative of his girlfriends cause that is the only way to be, in family. No, he wasn’t imagining it all. It had happened. So she wasn’t a dream. But his girlfriend was, not an hallucination. A dream. He dreamt of living with her, maybe in London. Of going shopping together, and of watching the same programs always. Of coming home and being there for each other, every single night of the week. But this dream was now dead. The silent seductress had ruined it all. One dream down. He would have girlfriends in the future, but he would never live the family dream. His band would play gigs, but never top the charts. He would pass A Levels but never become a Dr of Maths. What is a dream without hope? And What is a life without dreams? He realised that nothing remained. He was almost home. His mind was made up.
Mercury Rev – Deserter’s Songs
He arrived at home and cut the phone line in the front garden. It would stop his girlfriend phoning and making him see reason, it would stop her knowing about his failures and it would make everything easier. His parents wouldn’t use the phone, and if they did and found it failing they would contact the services the next morning, by which time it could be reconnected. He loved his cats, they were company without conversation, and they were friends without demands. All friends demand something, trust, love, you know what it is. So he loved his cats and couldn’t leave them to starve or meet new friends who fed them, they wouldn’t understand the cats, so they couldn’t have the cats. After much searching he found the poison, he checked it wouldn’t be a painful death in the encyclopaedia and then fed them the poison. He watched them die peacefully. He cried for quite a while and then buried them in the garden, left a cross of stones above them and for the first time in his life he prayed.
The rest of the evening went quite well, dinner was pasta, pudding was ice cream which he served. He laced it with a small amount of sleeping tablets found in the kitchen draw. He didn’t want to harm his parents so they were only given trace amounts, to make them sleepy. Hopefully they would go to bed of their own accord. He didn’t fancy the idea of dragging them upstairs. He laughed a quiet laugh when they crawled off to bed at only 9 O’clock. He took a needle and injected them with air, to kill them. They stopped breathing almost instantly. He was ashamed of himself for not telling them of their death, they were his parents, he must have owed them that. This almost made him cry, but he knew he was far beyond tears.
Fertiliser is known to be used to make a bomb, now he had done this before and so quickly made a home made bomb. Once made he drove (using his dad’s now no longer needed car) to where his girlfriend lived. The bomb was planted in the hallway of there house, since he knew where they kept their spare keys. He left quietly after lighting it. He had about 20 seconds. He waiting till 10 were gone. He rang the doorbell and then he ran. He ran very fast and was very scared. He defiantly didn’t want to torture his girlfriend or her family. But these things happen. He heard the bang and saw in his rear view mirror the windows blow out and the roof almost crash in, they died instantly. He started on the drive back home, he needed to get some sleep. He wondered why he rang the doorbell. Maybe it was so they knew something was coming. He had already forgotten, and that was then.
Everyone has a fear of getting home to their front door open, it had happened to him once before, an ambulance had been coming. He hadn’t understood and it always haunted him. This time it was scary. The door was wide open. He stopped the car in the middle of the road, and ran inside. Sitting on the stairs, crying and screaming was his girlfriend. Alive. She looked up, she was worried and upset. She ran to him and hugged him. He pushed her back and looked at her.
“What did you do… I mean why? How… no! Why? You parents… Where have you been… I was worried… Why? Parents!! I tried to phone… No tone… I worried… I love you…. I came here… No one here… but lights…. No! Why? No! I…. I…. Found them…. Dead! Why? What? Noo…..”
He cried himself. He had failed. He had let himself down. She waited for him to speak. He wanted to say something like “Sorry” or “I had to” he really didn’t know what to say. One half of him wanted to explain it all, but he knew he couldn’t, it would break her heart.
“I Love You”
She smiled, he had somehow said the right thing, he now felt cocky, he looked around. She was standing there, in the hallway. Soaking from the rain outside. Tear stained face, smiling cause she knew he loved her. He saw a knife on the side board. He lifted it and stabbed her. Not a clean stab, not what he wanted, this was a dirty painful stab. He wanted her to die instantly. He didn’t want to create suffering. He had failed once again. So he stabbed again, and again. He tore her body apart, painful and suffering. She cried and scream and then tried to kiss him. He loved her and she loved him. This was wrong. He kept stabbing and tearing her body long after she had died.
Soaked in blood he broke into a neighbour, whom he knew kept a gun, and stole it. He needed it. All the bullets and everything. This time he successfully got to college, it was a Tuesday, he never had liked Tuesdays. He had cleaned himself and felt very content with life. On the way he made a list of everyone he cared for. His old friend, his girlfriend’s friends, the medium, her friend. He kept one bullet for each. And so he executed them, quietly. He went up to each one and asked to have a word with them, he would take them somewhere secluded and then as they back was turned he shot them. He buried each one. And marked their graves, with branches. He found then men the hardest to kill. Some of these people had fought for him, saved him from being bullied. This was an evil thing to do. But yet, he did it. He cried at the end.
He found a tall building; it had to be tall, and then mugged a window cleaner. He thought it was ironic that after his day the last crime he committed was mugging a window cleaner. Using the ladder he climb to the window of the second to last floor. And kicked down the ladder, it smashed a Porsche.
He stood there, at the edge of the ledge. He couldn’t climb down, and there was no window for him to climb in. If he waited too long the fire brigade would come and get him down and then he would be arrested for murder and then his life would be over, that was worse than death, it wasn’t an option. He had one way out. Suicide, he thought, is wrong. It is breaking a promise. It is breaking the most important promise you’ve ever made. It’s breaking a promise to your mother. To kill your mother or your girlfriend is ok, cause that is only breaking a promise to yourself. You broke the promise that you loved them, but to break a promise to your mother is not right. It should not be done.
He stood at the edge of the ledge, having destroyed everything he cared for, with no way down, and he couldn’t kill himself cause he would not break a promise to his mother. He couldn’t wait for too long and he couldn’t move. He paused.
